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When you think of a cheerful job, you probably don’t think of loan officer, warehouse manager, or accountant. But it turns out these are some of the happiest careers in America, according to online jobs site Careerbliss.com.

CareerBliss compiled a list of the 20 happiest jobs based on analysis from more than 100,400 employee-generated reviews between February 2011 and January 2012. Employees were asked to rate 10 factors that affect workplace happiness, including one’s relationship with the boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and control over the work one does on a daily basis.

The employees valued each factor on a five-point scale, and also indicated how important it was to their overall happiness at work. The numbers were combined to find an average rating of overall employee happiness for each respondent, and then sorted by job title to find which occupations had the happiest workers. A minimum of 50 employee reviews was required to be considered for CareerBliss’ 20 Happiest Jobs in America, and executive level jobs, like chief executive, were excluded from the study.

“Since we tend to spend more waking hours working than doing anything else, our work happiness is a huge factor in our overall happiness,” says CareerBliss’ chief executive, Heidi Golledge. “Nearly every person has a desire to feel valued and content, and a workplace or a career that provides that for its employees is key to not only happiness for the employees but the long-term success of the business.”

The happiest job of all isn’t kindergarten teacher or dentist. It’s software quality assurance engineer. Professionals with this job title are typically involved in the entire software development process to ensure the quality of the final product. This can include processes such as requirements gathering and documentation, source code control, code review, change management, configuration management, release management, and the actual testing of the software, explains Matt Miller, chief technology officer at CareerBliss.

With an index score of 4.24, software quality assurance engineers said they are more than satisfied with the people they work with and the company they work for. They’re also fairly content with their daily tasks and bosses.

These professionals "typically make between $85,000 and $100,000 a year in salary and are the gatekeepers for releasing high quality software products,” Miller says. Organizations generally will not allow software to be released until it has been fully tested and approved by their software quality assurance group, he adds.

Golledge says, “In past studies, we have noted that the long hours and intense demands on software engineers' time caused them to rank as less than happy. However, we are happy to report that software quality assurance engineers feel rewarded at work, as they are typically the last stop before software goes live and correctly feel that they are an integral part of the job being done at the company.”